This invention relates to a technical field of fabrication, conversion, and treatment of sheet material as a strip or web such as paper, cardboard, textile, plastic film, etc. which moves in an industrial machine or installation where the sheet, strip, or web is subjected to a certain number of changes of direction along the path that it follows past succeeding treatment stations; the contact-free diversion, thanks to the air cushion, preventing friction or marking.
The machines or installations of this type often are provided with heaters constituted as emitters of infrared rays and are used mainly for drying, for example drying of ink in the case of printing machines, or the elimination of water in paper-making installations, this type of emitter allowing for rapid temperature increases with excellent all-around applicability (no thermal inertia). The dryers using infrared radiation are normally provided at straight sections along the path of the sheet material, between two succeeding diverting rollers of the contact or contact-free type (see for example EP 0,346,081, WO 8,795,644, and French 2,247,687 as well as above-cited European 0,507,218). The result is that the machines or installations in question are in fact very bulky, the deflecting rollers form large elements that do nothing to the sheet material, strip, or web being treated "on the fly."